A mower, also known as a weeder, a grass cutter, a lawn trimmer, etc, is a mechanical tool for trimming a lawn, vegetation and so on, which is composed of a cutter head, an engine, walking wheels, a walking mechanism, a blade, a handle, and a control part.
There now exist two types of mowers, i.e., hand-push type and self-propelled type. Forward Walking of a hand-push type mower completely relies on hand push without any power from the walking wheels thereof. A clutch is disposed on a walking wheel of a self-propelled type mower; by means of connection of a crankshaft-connected belt wheel on an engine with a belt wheel on the clutch, engagement and disengagement of the clutch are achieved by manually pulling a clutch handle to realize rotation of the walking wheel, and only the direction needs to be controlled manually after a self-propelled mode is activated. Self-propelled devices of the mowers in the prior art are provided with either a clutch mechanism or a stepless variable-speed mechanism, and most of them are controlled by cables respectively, which is a well-known technical solution. Certainly, there also exists a self-propelled device in which a clutch is integrated with a stepless variable-speed mechanism. However, all mowers that are generally available in the market have only one way of speed regulation; that is, a clutch handle is pulled to achieve engagement of a self-propelled device allowing regulation of the mower to a self-propelled mode, and a clutch in the self-propelled device is disengaged after the clutch handle is released, thereby achieving regulation to a hand push mode.
There have emerged on the market many stepless speed regulation mechanisms to achieve controlling the forward speed of a mower through only stepless variable-speed regulation, for example, in a walking stepless variable-speed regulation mechanism of a lawn mower disclosed by Chinese patent No. CN203511292U, a variable speed belt wheel set is disposed between a driven belt wheel and a driving belt wheel, which is connected to the driven belt wheel and the driving belt wheel by using a first speed changing cut-edged belt and a second speed changing cut-edged belt, respectively, and the contact radius of the two speed changing cut-edged belts is changed by a cable driven by pulling a speed changing lever to achieve stepless variable-speed regulation of the mower. It is well-known that compared with disposing a tensioning wheel between the driving and driven belt wheels in the prior art, such a stepless variable-speed regulation mechanism having the variable speed belt wheel set disposed between the driving and driven belt wheels is complex in structure and requires massive corresponding improvement on a chassis, thus leading to increased manufacturing cost.
For another example, as disclosed in a Chinese patent with a patent number of CN105325128A, a self-propelled device is pulled by means of a cable, and thus enabled to rotate up and down around a driving shaft to thereby tension or loosen a driving belt, leading to increased or reduced friction between the belt wheel and the belt to achieve stepless speed change. In the process of rotating the self-propelled device, the cable in connection with the self-propelled device is driven by a speed regulating handle; that is, the forward speed of the mower is determined by a distance between the cable and the speed regulating handle in the speed regulation process. However, in this patent, a self-propelled lever, a push handle and the speed regulating handle are disposed spaced apart from each other in the front-back direction, and activation of engagement and disengagement and the speed regulation process are both carried out by pulling the handles; and therefore, the operation process is too complicated and prone to cause confusion and misoperation of a user.